The British media have been reporting in the last twenty-four hours that Sally Clark, the solicitor wrongly convicted of killing two of her children and later cleared, was found dead yesterday. There is a brief version of the full printed Times report here. It doesn’t mention what the printed version said today, namely that Mrs Clark was, or had become, a depressive alcoholic. The case is with the county coroner, a committed Christian and wife of a Baptist pastor.
I had a phone call this afternoon from a reporter on the News Of The World. He informed me that Mrs Clark had been living not in Chelmsford as widely reported but in Hatfield Peverel, where one of my churches is. Did I know her? He was looking for someone in the village who knew her and could say a kind word for a quote about her. I didn’t know her, nor did the couple in the church most likely to know everything about village life. I’m not sure what I would have been willing to say even if I had known her.
The reporter told me that he’d drawn a blank with the Anglican church, with other village organisations and with other residents of the road in which she had lived. It seems that she went into hiding and only the media and the authorities knew her address. The pain had caused as complete a withdrawal from life as possible. Perhaps she felt she could no longer trust anyone. If that is what she felt I could not blame her. If so it would have been a drastic self-protection strategy.
Thus this is not a double tragedy, as has been said – the original miscarriage of justice plus the loss of a devoted wife and mother (she and her husband had a third child) just two days before Mothering Sunday. It is a triple tragedy, for in the village would have been many kind, caring and discreet people who could have offered support and even love. I do not say that to condemn – that is the last thing to do, especially at a time like this. In Hatfield Peverel we now mourn our unknown resident, and pray for her husband and child.
Technorati Tags: Sally+Clark, Hatfield+Peverel, News+Of+The+World, Mothering+Sunday
Big Circumstance 
Amen
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Hi,
Yours is a very moving tribute to Sally Clark. It is such sad news.
We live in sad times but she was strong in the face of injustice. We could all learn
a few lessons from her stoic self-discipline. As a lawyer she knew the
score – it wasn’t her place to prove her innocence – it was up to the
Judge and Jury to prove her guilt, armed with the weight of dodgy evidence,
which amounted to nothing, considering she was innocent.
Have you seen this SUSPICIOUS “tribute”?
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http://mutated-unmuated.blogspot.com/2007/03/sally-clarks-death.html
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Yours sincerely
Coral P
http://www.coralpoetry.blogspot.com
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Sally,
Thanks for your ‘Amen’ here and the posting on your site. We’re grateful for the encouragement to others to pray. There was real shock in the congregation this morning when I shared the news, along with a deep desire to pray and great sorrow that they would have offered help if only they had known.
Coral,
Thanks for your comment. I think the URL you post is not a tribute at all but a snide piece of writing that the author would not have dared to have published while Sally Clark was still alive. May she rest in peace.
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Hi,
This is an open letter to Prof Hamblin who has blocked replies at his blog.
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http://mutated-unmuated.blogspot.com/2007/03/sally-clarks-death-preventable-tragedy.html
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Professor Hamblin,
Your erroneous original thoughts still stand here. Yes, the Internet is a big place, but not for an 8-year old grieving boy whose name is on your blog.
I actually have more respect for Roy Meadows who has maintained a respectful silence (who carried out his job to the best of his ability, armed with the technology at the time) than I have for you, a person armed with hindsight who says:
“Perhaps Clark was possessed by guilt that she really had killed her kids.”
One of her babies died of a staph infection. How do you justify this argument, which you posted 24 hours after her death? How can she kill her baby by staph? You and I are both armed with hindsight.
One of these “kids” is an 8-year-old boy who is likely to be reading your message.
You also say: “Sally Clark has died in suspicious circumstances.”
As a medical professional, how can you suggest these are the circumstances 48 hours before a post mortem?
OK, I accept this is doctor’s jargon for “sudden death” but to the layperson (including an 8-year old boy) this means foul play or murder. How would you explain that supposition to the other occupant of her house when he reads this message at your blog?
If I were you and I chose to leave the original post here indefinitely, I would be looking to compensating this little boy in monetary terms. I think you should admit your error by sending this boy (the deceased’s son) a cheque for an amount no less than £100,000 as compensation in the event he reads these inaccurate and malicious slurs against his late mother.
Regards,
Coral
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Coral,
I have accepted and posted your latest comment, the open letter to Professor Hamblin, in the spirit of open debate. Without wishing to take sides (although I think it’s plain where I’m coming from) I’m just puzzled why you wanted to use my blog to post your open letter rather than use your own blog for it, where you already have a post on the subject, and where the comments include a discussion of Professor Hamblin’s views. I don’t mean this nastily, I’d just appreciate clarification.
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Hi,
Thank you for your gracious reply.
I will be posting the letter in question at the end of the comments section at my blog. The reason I have placed this open letter in your comments section is that I believe that discussion about a recently deceased person should be confined to the comments section of blogs. This is the reason for activating the comments tab on your blog. Bloggers have a choice to close off this section if they are not willing to accept any other views on the matter in question.
I have solicited discussion from Professor Hamblin and he has failed to place a message at my blog but, as you will have noticed, other bloggers have visited and written their views. Professor Hamblin is at liberty to discuss whatever subject he chooses at his blog. He is free to make comment at my blog but has chosen not to. He has chosen to defile the character of a recently deceased person and has used his extensive CV and medical background as the basis for this argument, something I don’t believe a genuine medical professor would even contemplate. But there’s a distinct possibility that Professor Hamblin’s blog is run by a scurrilous blogger who is posing as a professor. There are millions of people faking doctor’s identities and blogging about their fictitious doctor’s lives. There’s no law against this practice, apparently.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6465525.stm
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Regards,
Coral
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You might be interested to look at this
http://tinyurl.com/34rjr8
and this
http://tinyurl.com/22unbk
and going back a bit
http://tinyurl.com/yuum23
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